Whispers They Hear
by Inkfire
Summary: They all still see the shadows, hear the screams and the whispers - haunted, forever. A response to the Christmas Carols challenge on The Dark Lord's Most Faithful Forum, and to a Hogwarts Online Prompt of the Day.


**Here's a fic I wrote both for Lady Eleanor Boleyn's Christmas Carols challenge (inspired by the carol "Do you hear what I hear?"), and for the Hogwarts Online Prompt of the Day for January 3rd: "we all carry scars, inside and out. You're no different than the rest of us."**

_**Christmas Carols **_

_**Your challenge for the next two weeks, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story using one or more Harry Potter Characters and a Christmas Carol. You can just reference the Christmas Carol if you wish, but there has to be at least one mention of a carol.**_

_**And just to make it more challenging, the word limit is between 500 words and 1000.**_

* * *

The wind blew with tastes of ashes and sea-licked stones into her hair, and her head reeled with the sheer immensity of the world. Bellatrix's frostbitten, bloody hands curled upon the dainty edges of the window, and she gasped in a few greedy breaths, widened eyes skidding across the skies anxiously, taking it in. She'd almost forgotten what such nights looked like, it had been years, decades, centuries – it had been four hundred and eighty-six days and then a blur that had felt considerably longer – and the stars were dead to her, flickering out one after the other, slipping from her fingers as she reached out, screaming. Yet they still stood there tonight in some terrible distance, arrogant, looming strangers, and her neck ached and her fingers burned and her heart shouted a wordless cry in the silence as she gazed up, up, _up_ into pale, faraway spirals she'd once known so – well. There was one tiny, livid spot of brightness that bore her name, a word she'd chanted and chanted in the privacy of her distorted thoughts and willed herself not to forget, she could _not_forget it of course, impossible, it was her, who she was. Bellatrix Lestrange, this was who she was and nobody could take this away and nothing could make the notion fade. Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix. The Dark Lord. Black. The Blacks, the stars, the Mark, the blackness on her arm, aching, burning – She gritted her teeth, folding over on herself, blinded by odd tears that made everything blurry. Blurry like distant galaxies, like childhood memories, like pale loathed faces and songs, carols she should have forgotten instead, songs that played in her head, too-high and taunting, and would not stop…

_**Said the night wind to the little lamb,  
"Do you see what I see?  
Way up in the sky, little lamb,  
Do you see what I see?  
A star, a star, dancing in the night  
With a tail as big as a kite,  
With a tail as big as a kite."**_

* * *

Sometimes the voices still came. He spent days sitting on the floor, wordless, whenever the elf was too busy to come and fuss and get him up and ensure that he be warm, at least. He spent days in careful, watchful emptiness, in a void that was the size of his own head and yet stretched so much further and deeper and engulfed the whole world – really. He sat in the absence of who he was and the warm numbness that was hilariously fake. But he had forgotten how one judged of such things, and so he could not laugh. Yet sometimes things came back. They crawled under the edges of his subconscious and prodded at the rigid layers of what he'd been told was right and wrong, cautious, feeble. They cried out, briefly, ringing through his brain and making him grimace, and then they were gone. They appeared and left in flashes, sometimes, but most often they whispered to him – screams and words that held insane power, if only he could hold on to the thought long enough, enough to find a wand. He could not recall how it had felt to hold a wand. But he could cling to the hushed sounds of his past, crooning to him in the dead of night, flickering like a dying candle. It was there. It burned on. A faraway smile stretched his pale lips, and Barty Crouch Junior sat and waited and guarded the few things that were his still, patiently, patiently. The time would come.

_**Said the little lamb to the shepherd boy,  
"Do you hear what I hear?  
Ringing through the sky, shepherd boy,  
Do you hear what I hear?  
A song, a song high above the trees  
With a voice as big as the the sea,  
With a voice as big as the the sea."**_

* * *

He awoke twisting, trembling in tangled sheets, drenched in ice cold sweat with his heart threatening to leap out of his chest.

It hurt to think and it hurt to breathe, but still he whimpered, _Draco Draco Draco_ in the dimness until he wasn't sure where he was anymore, and somehow some part of him hoped for Azkaban. But he was not in Azkaban. Velvet brushed his skin and his wife cowered by his side, aching and yet afraid to reach for him. And Lucius shut his eyes, tightly and tighter still, to welcome the torturous image of a face that was too much like his, greyish-white and thin and aghast. He wished he was the one being punished still. He wished with throbbing temples and traitor tears scalding his eyelids, weakness nearly taking over.

He wished he could forget, with all the strength of his cowardly heart.

_**Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king,  
"Do you know what I know?  
In your palace warm, mighty king,  
Do you know what I know?  
A Child, a Child shivers in the cold-  
Let us bring him silver and gold,  
Let us bring him silver and gold."**_

* * *

Shadows lurked around the door handles and the banister, ran before him in the dim light and stalked in the corners of every room as he paced it restlessly, seething. They slipped out of sight and control, taunting, like memories. How had they not dimmed with time, with the dull, deep, wrenching pain of Azkaban, tattooed all over his soul, engraved in the marrow of his bones? They were supposed to fade. He had broken free, he had left countless strips of him behind, with old blood and old bonds. Yet everything was rushing back to kick him in the teeth. Everything was floating just beyond his reach and yet ever so present, too present.

Shadows, his head was full of shadows, of muffled voices, flashes, phantom pains and wild anxieties. His head was full of their screams in his ears, his screams, too shrill, too – real. And he carried the scars, inside and out, he was no different. He was just like the rest of them, sometimes, mad with nightmares and shrieking into the night, he still remembered writhing, clinging to words, anything. Not _He will come back, no_ – _He is at Hogwarts _–

Sirius breathed in harshly, nearly gagging with the bitter scent of this place, his family home.

Family – no. Family was Harry, Harry standing next to him by the tapestry, young and warm and full of strength. Harry with his messy hair and his laugh and – his eyes, Lily's eyes – he had his mother's eyes. Harry and hope and innocence, the only reasons for survival. Sirius clenched his fists, and a smile briefly twisted his mouth upward, desperate, savage.

He would fight, and fight to the end. He would fight for what he was, what he believed in. And he would _enjoy_ it.

_**Said the king to the people everywhere,  
"Listen to what I say!  
Pray for peace, people, everywhere,  
Listen to what I say!  
The Child, the Child sleeping in the night  
He will bring us goodness and light,  
He will bring us goodness and light."**_


End file.
